Attributions

Question 1

Heider’s theory of naive psychology

Answer 1

behaviors: motive driven > look for causal explanations
attempt to control and predict the environment > look for enduring properties (eg. personality, abilities)
personal / dispositional / internal vs environmental / situational / external

Question 2

Jones and Davis’s theory of correspondent inference

Answer 2

the sources of information that people use to explain a person’s behavior as due to
dispositional traits
1. freely chosen behavior
2. non-common effects
3. socially undesirable behavior
4. hedonic relevance
5. personalism

Question 3

freely chosen behaviour

Answer 3

more indicative of disposition

Question 4

non-common effects

Answer 4

Effects of behaviour that are relatively exclusive to that behaviour rather than other behaviours
> tells more about dispositions

Question 5

socially undesirable behaviour

Answer 5

socially desirable behaviour:
> tells us little about the disposition
> because it is likely to be controlled by societal norms
socially undesirable behaviour:
> counter-normative
> better basis for making a correspondent inference

Question 6

hedonic relevance

Answer 6

The
actor’s behavioural outcome affects the perceiver to some extent
(non-intentional)

Question 7

personalism

Answer 7

The actor has an intention to harm or benefit the perceiver

Question 8

Harold Kelley’s covariation model

Answer 8

COVARIATION between the behavior and the source tells us what source we can
attribute the behavior to:
1. actor / person – the actor or the source of the behavior
consensus: low
distinctiveness: low
consistency: high

2. object / entity – the person or the object / entity the actor is reacting to
   consensus: high
   distinctiveness: high
   consistency: high
3. situation / occasion – the time and place in which the behavior takes place
   consensus: low
   distinctiveness: high
   consistency: low

Question 9

the covariation principle

Answer 9

1. consensus
   others also do the same thing
2. distinctiveness
   actor does NOT behave the same way towards other objects / entities
3. consistency
   always the same way across time and place

Question 10

causal inference from single observations (kelley)

Answer 10

Attributing to EITHER disposition of the person OR the demands of the situation is
sufficient to explain the behavior

Whether the environment inhibits or facilitates the behavior

Question 11

AUGMENTATION principle

Answer 11

when behavior occurs despite situational constraints, we AUGMENT attributions to personal causes

Question 12

DISCOUNTING principle

Answer 12

when behavior occurs in situations which facilitates engagement in such behavior, we DISCOUNT person attributions to that behavior

Question 13

OVER-JUSTIFICATION

Answer 13

lose INTRINSIC MOTIVATION upon contingent rewarding

Question 14

WEINER’S ATTRIBUTION THEORY

Answer 14

Locus of control:
internal vs external

Stability

Controllability

Question 15

ATTRIBUTIONS IN ACADEMIC SETTINGS

Answer 15

ability: stable + internal
effort: unstable + internal
task difficulty: stable + external
luck: unstable + external

Question 16

Emotions: angry

Answer 16

attribution: internal and controllable

Question 17

pity

Answer 17

external and uncontrollable

Question 18

stigma

Answer 18

identifiable condition or feature that makes an individual subject to social rejection

eg obesity

Question 19

uncontrollable stigma

Answer 19

may not lead to social rejection

Question 20

Hopelessness

Answer 20

if attributing failure to (explanatory style) stable, global, & internal causes

Question 21

self-serving bias

Answer 21

attribute success to internal causes
­
attribute failure to external or unstable or uncontrollable causes

Question 22

Illusion of control

Answer 22

people assume that they have control but in fact they don’t

outcome > chance probability

­suggestion of skill, e.g,. competition, choice into chance event will lead to illusion of control

Question 23

Depressive realism

Answer 23

depressed people are more realistic (accurate) in estimating chance event with “skill” cues

­non-depressed people usually overestimate degree of control

Question 24

Reward and Punishment

Answer 24

we will reward and punish others:
­
more if the causes are internal and controllable
­
less if the causes are external and uncontrollable

Question 25

Fundamental attribution error

Answer 25

The general tendency to make personality inferences
­
Overestimate disposition factors as causes of behavior and underestimate situational determinants

Question 26

reasons of fab

Answer 26

Focus of attention
­ Actor behavior attracts more attention than background situational factors

Differential forgetting
­ Situational causes are forgotten more easily than dispositional causes
produce a dispositional shift over time

Cultural and development factors
­ Western independent self vs. non-western interdependent self
(which differentiates fundamental attribution bias vs correspondence bias)
learn to attribute dispositionally in late childhood in Western vs attributing more situationally in Hindu Indian

Linguistic factors
­ Easier to describe actor and action in same terms but not situations ­ e.g., greedy person but not greedy situation

Question 27

Actor-observer bias

Answer 27

The actor (agent of the behavior) is prone to making situation attributions while the observer is prone to making person / disposition attributions

Question 28

False consensus effect

Answer 28

The tendency for individuals to overestimate the proportion of people in the population who would think or act the same way they themselves do

Question 29

Ethnocentrism

Answer 29

belief that one’s own group is better than other groups and use our own group as a standard

Question 30

Ultimate fundamental attribution error

Answer 30

in-group members’ …
­ desirable behaviors to internal, stable factors, and ­ undesirable behaviors to external, unstable factors
­
out-group members’ …
­ desirable behaviors to external, unstable factors, and
­ undesirable behaviors to internal, stable factors